1. Technical Field
Present invention embodiments relate to software performance testing, and more specifically, to software performance testing capabilities built in a software product.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Computer systems employing multi-tier software products typically include combinations of databases, web application servers and client devices on which client software is executed. Multi-tier software products may support a variety of different operating systems and databases and as a result, environments in which multi-tier software products are installed may differ significantly from each other which can make troubleshooting of customer-reported problems difficult. In particular, in the case where problems are in the domain of performance (e.g., the performance of a computing system is too slow either in single-user situations or under load from multiple users), the uniqueness of the customer's databases, hardware and network environments can make problem diagnosis a time-consuming effort as each aspect of the configuration needs to be isolated and analyzed.
In addition, in a typical environment in which multi-tier software products are employed, not only databases, hardware and network environments may differ from each other but also different types of data and different workflows can make comparisons of captured performance data and related analysis difficult.
One approach to capture the customer performance data for further analysis is to execute software performance testing tools at a customer site at which the multi-tier software products are installed.
Using these separate software performance testing tools requires complex and domain-specific skills. Within the development environment, performance testing usually requires dedicated software applications as well as additional dedicated hardware. Installing the specific software performance testing tools and the additional dedicated hardware for testing purposes is often difficult and time consuming, as well as expensive.